She straightened up slowly.
It was Ahathin. Her tutor. Little round bald Ahathin with his spectacles sliding down his nose, the way they always did slide down his nose, although she was used to seeing him trying to juggle several rolls of parchment and an armful of books while pushing up his glasses, and she’d never seen him wearing Speaker sticks. She hadn’t known he was a Speaker. She took another look at the sticks, to make sure she wasn’t imagining things, as her heart, or maybe her stomach, seemed to take a great leap of relief.
He stood up from his bow, pushed his spectacles up his nose, awkwardly shook his sticks so they’d lie flat, and said, “My lady, I am your least servant.”
“Oh!” she said. “Ahathin.”
“Sylvi,” said her mother sharply.
You met your Speaker in private, right before the binding ceremony, and you weren’t supposed to know who he was until that moment (just as you weren’t supposed to know anything about your pegasus). It was still an enormously formal occasion and you had more words you were supposed to have memorised to say. Sylvi had memorised them, but the shock of discovering that her Speaker was almost the only magician she’d ever met who didn’t make her flesh crawl was so great she forgot them.
“Sir Magician—Worthy—sir—” But she couldn’t remember any more, so instead she said what she was thinking: “I am so glad it’s you.”
“Oh, Sylvi,” said her mother.
Ahathin’s face twitched, but he said placidly, “Yes, your father seemed to think that might be your reaction.”
The guild chose a Speaker, not the king. A king could request, and in order to have done a favour for the king, the magicians might listen to a request for a specific Speaker for an unimportant royal. But being her tutor was one thing; being her Speaker was a much closer, more demanding, and longer-lasting appointment—and tied him visibly and humblingly to a mere fourth child. The first child of one of the more important barons would be a much better placement. “Do you mind?” she said.
“Sylvi!” said the queen for the third time, sounding rather despairing.
Ahathin’s placid expression was growing somewhat fixed. He glanced at the queen and said, “Saving your grace’s presence, I would say that the king asked me a similar question before he approached the selection committee. I replied that I did not consider Lady Sylvi a lesser royal because she is the fourth child, and that I would be inexpressibly honoured if I were chosen to be her Speaker. The king indicated that he believed my lady Sylvi would not lay an undue charge upon her Speaker and indeed might be happy if he continued to spend most of his time in the library. And that he, the king, would entertain hopes in such an instance that it might possibly encourage my lady Sylvi to spend more time there.”
Sylvi thought this deeply unfair, since it seemed to her that she spent a great deal of time there already. Wasn’t she always bringing him authorisation slips from the head librarian? And hadn’t he started asking her horrible trick questions based on what he knew she was reading? ... Although she wasn’t sure if they were horrible trick questions or not, since he was usually asking her what she thought about things, and if she hadn’t read enough yet to have any thoughts, he said, well, let me know when you do, so then she had to. Sometimes he even asked her questions when there were other people around—and when she had protested (later, in private) he shook his head and said,“You’re a princess. You’re going to need to be able to think on your feet, later if not sooner.”
Even so. She had her mouth all open to protest when it occurred to her that she was pushing her mother rather hard. She made an enormous effort and said,“Sir Magician, Worthy Sir, I thank and welcome you, and I—I—”
“Look forward to a long and fruitful dialogue,” said Ahathin helpfully.
“Yes—oh, yes—yes. And we—we three—pegasus, magician and p-princess, shall be as the sun, moon and stars, and all shall look upon us and find us—uh—wonderful.”
“A light upon their path,” said her mother, “and a thing of wonder. I hope you’ve memorised the binding better.” Her mother had heard her say it over just yesterday, but that had been sitting swinging her legs on a chair in the queen’s office, with no one else present, and no surprises.
“I—I think so,” said Sylvi, a little ashamed.“It’s just that it’s Ahathin. I’ve been so dread—” She stopped. He was still a magician, and she was being fearfully impolite. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“There are tales of much worse, my queen, my lady,” said Ahathin. “Razolon, who was king six hundred years ago, is said to have spoken but one word to his first Speaker: you! Whereupon he ran him through with his sword.”
“Why?” said Sylvi, fascinated.
“He believed—with some justice—that the magicians were plotting that he should not come to the throne. He was a rather—er—precocious twelve.”
“The occasion you might tell of,” said the queen, “which I believe you might remember for yourself, is when my husband’s second brother was bound. Do you know this story?” she said to Sylvi. Sylvi shook her head. “Well, ask your uncle some time to tell it to you. The version I heard is that there had been an episode of the throwing-up sickness, and that the youngest prince was the worst affected, but it was such a terrible omen to put off a binding they decided to go through with it. And when his Speaker arrived, your uncle bowed and—threw up all over his Speaker’s shoes. But I believe the ritual of binding went perfectly.”
“It did,” said Ahathin. “I was one of the incense-bearers. Although the curious informality of the newly-assigned Speaker-to-the-Bound’s footgear was somewhat remarked upon.”
The queen laughed. “And thirty years later, Mindo is good friends with Ned, I believe, although he is rarely needed to Speak. We will therefore take the present informality as a good omen—you feel welcomed by your princess, I hope?”
“I do indeed, your grace.”
“Good.” The queen frowned at Sylvi. “And now we must go, or we’ll be late.”
CHAPTER 4
Sylvi got through the first part of the ceremony somehow, and she knew she must have remembered what to do and to say, because her father was smiling at her and Danacor (drat him) looked relieved. Thowara stood just behind Danacor’s right shoulder, looking exquisite; the flowers tucked among his primaries glittered like jewels. She wanted to pinch him, just to dent his dignity a little, even though she knew it wouldn’t’ve worked. He would have looked at her gravely and in mild surprise. Beyond Danacor and Thowara stood the rest of the family and their pegasi; the queen, Sylvi’s other two brothers, two of her uncles and three of her aunts. Lrrianay was absent; he would be escorting her pegasus into the Court in a little while. What her father did have to bear him company was the Sword.
The Sword was the greatest treasure of their house, and the most important symbol of their rule, for the Sword chose the ruler. Balsin, who signed the treaty with the pegasi, had been carrying the Sword; some histories claimed that it was the Sword that Argen wanted out of his country, not Balsin. For some generations now the Sword had passed from parent to eldest child, but when Great-great-great-great-uncle Snumal had died without direct descendents, the Sword had chosen which cousin the crown should pass to. Sylvi had never understood what happened when it passed—when the Sword had left Grinbad and come to Great—eight greats—uncle Rudolf, how did they know it had happened?
She’d asked her father this several times and he’d only shaken his head, but recently she’d asked again and possibly because she was going to have to swear fealty to him and it on her twelfth birthday, he stopped mid head-shake, stared at nothing for a minute and finally said, “It’s rather like a bad dream. You can see it in your mind’s eye, and it’s so bright you think it will blind you. You can’t move, and it comes closer and closer and ... there is the most extraordinary sensation when it finally touches you, somewhere between diving into icy water and banging your elbow really hard, and even though you’ve seen it nearly every day of your life—and you know you’re in this fix because it’s already accepted you—you know that it’s the greatest treasure of your house and you’re suddenly and shamingly afraid it will cut you because you, after all, eldest child of the reigning monarch or not, are not worthy of it. But it doesn’t cut you, and you feel almost sick with relief. And then you seem to wake up, only it’s still there.”